Category: Blues
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Sugar Pie DeSanto: The Forgotten Queen of Chess Records?
There’s a song I heard recently that I haven’t been able to shake from my head. It’s a doozy of a song, soulful and funky, called “In The Basement” and it’s sung by Sugar Pie DeSanto and Etta James. It’s a great duet and was recorded whilst both singers were recording stars of Chess Records…
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BLUES DEATH MATCH – er, YEAH! Death Letter: Son House v The White Stripes
I like old songs. And I like modern cover versions of old songs. But which is best? The old or the new? There’s only one sensible, mature and adult way to find out: A Death-match of course! FIIIIIGHT! This will be the first of an occasional series of Death-matches where I pit old songs against…
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The Led Zeppelin Controversy: Who Wrote The Songs?
It is easy now to look at the relative fortunes of the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones – who doubtless regularly bathe in asses milk and feast on panda and swan – with the poor, early blues pioneers who struggled to scrape a living, as evidence that the British bands exploited /…
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The Man From Hell Comes To The 100 Club
Michael Katon and drummer Johnny Bee relax backstage at The 100 Club Michael Katon Live! The 100 Club in Oxford Street, London boasts a strong tradition of supporting the blues, having hosted Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Otis Span, Sonny Boy Williamson and those influenced by them such as The Yardbirds, Clapton, Beck, The…
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Ten Reasons Why The Blues Shouldn’t Appeal To British Teenagers
It’s strange fact that so many white British teenagers have found such appeal in music made half a century or more ago by black Americans. The blues appeals to so many people, very few of whom will have had direct experience of the subject matter. Being unfamiliar with what you are singing about is not…
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First Time I Got The Blues…
It wasn’t easy to expand one’s musical horizons in the eighties. Napster and Spotify really made life easier for us in the 21st century. Back then we didn’t have anyone to hold our hands and tell us “these are the good songs, these are the less good ones”. There was no one to advise that if…
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In Praise of Muddy Waters – Live At Newport
I’m going to start a piece about Muddy Waters and the history of the blues by talking about The Sex Pistols, so bear with me. The Sex Pistols 1976 gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall was one of the most influential of all time, not because of a vast crowd – there were only…
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Michael Katon, a UK Tour, Two Letters and a Special Cat
Have you ever written to a musician? What happened? Unless you are currently enjoying supper with Bono, I suspect the answer is “not very much”. Not that I would generally blame the musicians. I’m sure at least sixty percent of all letters to pop stars are written in green crayon and contain uncomfortable adolescent confessions…
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The Story Of The Blues (Part One)
Keith Richards remembers the first time he heard the blues, because it hit him pretty hard. He recalled the moment in his foreword to Robert Gordon’s “Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters”: “I heard Muddy through Mick Jagger. I met him on a train around 1961. He had a Chuck Berry…
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Rock’s Great “Lost” Albums of The Eighties #4: Michael Katon – Proud To Be Loud
Being born and raised in Hell must be quite a problem. It’s a bad neighbourhood. Your neighbours tend to be the sort that don’t mow their lawn (and store shopping trolleys there), seldom sort the recycling bin bags properly and often start needless and provocative boundary disputes with you. It’s also very very hot, all…
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Rock’s Great “Lost” Albums of the Eighties: #2 – Rocky Hill
When you think of rock n roll brothers, you generally picture squabbling siblings, such as Ray and Dave Davies, Noel and Liam Gallagher, Rich and Chris Robinson or Dave and Ed Milliband. Perhaps only Eddie and Alex Van Halen have really made things work apparently smoothly, and that’s possibly because one of them is a…
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44 Years And Counting: ZZ Top Live At Hammersmith Apollo
For some people ZZ Top are seen as something fun that happened in the eighties, like the Sinclair ZX81, perms, Rubik’s Cubes and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Those synth-guitar albums “Eliminator“, “Afterburner” and “Recycler” (the latter actually released in 1990) produced some of MTV’s most memorable videos featuring legions of girls, three guys, two…
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A Visit To Chess Records…And When Muddy Waters Met The Rolling Stones
2120 South Michigan Avenue was immortalised in song by the Rolling Stones in their 5×5 EP (recently re-released on Record Store Day) and was the headquarters and recording studio of Chess Records. It is worth listing just a few of the songs recorded at this studio, because that list is like a lesson in American…
Every record tells a story 